I knew we should have rescued the boy first
by CelebrateTheIrony17
Summary: 'Mockingjay' should Peeta have been rescued instead of Katniss. Overcome with guilt and pain at the unknown state of Katniss, Peeta Mellark considers trying something drastic to escape from his endless agony...
1. Chapter 1

**Mockingjay from Peeta's perspective.**

CHAPTER 1

I haven't spoken for days. Or possibly weeks. Maybe even months, I really don't know anymore. All that I know is Katniss Everdeen has been taken by the Capitol, and I'm not there to protect her. She could be being tortured, raped, abused; she might even have been killed. No, not killed. The Capitol wouldn't be so merciful to the one they call 'The Mockingjay', the one that started this whole rebellion.

Not a word has escaped my lips since that day. The day they 'rescued' me. Well, maybe one word. _Katniss. _I screamed it over and over as the claws from the hovercraft lifted me into the air. I reached out my hands, my arms, every limb I had at the chance that maybe she would grab a hold, and be lifted to safety with me. 'Safety'. 'Rescued'. The words used to describe my being ripped from the arena of the quarter quell. I don't feel safe. I haven't escaped from the danger, the fear, the pain. I've taken them all with me, in the wounds that cover my body, in the scars I will forever keep, and in the constant guilt, agony and crippling self-loathing I feel about the unknown state of Katniss Everdeen.

I'm sure I must be in great, paralysing pain. I have several broken ribs, a broken collar bone, a scar on my head that's about six inches long (from an injury I obtained whilst on the hovercraft, trying to escape to confines of a hospital bed) , and a multitude of other injuries that I'm not quite sure the extent of. Some surgery was done to fix up internal damage, but I don't care. Have they not realised yet, that I don't care about me anymore? That all I've ever wanted from an early age is for Katniss to be happy? To be healthy, safe and most importantly, alive?

No. They can't understand it. She can't even understand it. Always trying to save me, always trying to pay me back for some favour that she was convinced I had done for her, when I helped protect her in the 74th games. I _had _to protect her. How can she not realise, I _am_ her. She is all that I care for in this miserable, cruel world in which we live.

A nurse comes in to change my IV. She says something, but I'm not sure what. Some meaningless drivel I suppose, a greeting perhaps, an empty hope that I might be feeling better today. I respond the way I always do, stare blankly ahead, and not even register her presence in the room. She leaves as soon as her task is done, and I continue on as before.

Katniss Everdeen is being held in the Capitol. I am here, safe in District 13. Something has gone wrong, and Panem, as hideous as it was to me before has lost its single glowing spark in the darkness. I cannot, will not live in a world without Katniss Everdeen. At that moment, I regain the will to move again, slightly shaking my head back and forth, slowly at first then gaining speed, until I become manic with it. I will not live in a world without Katniss, even if that means I don't get to live at all.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

About two weeks after I left the arena, and I can finally walk again. I also start to receive visitors. All unwelcome. A very unhappy Haymitch, obviously drunk just sat with me for about an hour, not talking with tears in his eyes. A chirpy Delly Cartwright, assuring me that Katniss was a tough girl and probably fine, after all, remember how intimidating and strong she seemed to everyone at school? My most surprising visitor was Gale Hawthorne, but looking back, I see that it shouldn't really have been shocked to see him. He sat down on the chair beside my bed, stared straight in to my eyes, saying only this. 'It should have been you'.

At that moment, I uttered the first words I had spoken in a while, 'I know'. After that, I straightened up, and started to stare straight forward again. He sat with me a while in total silence, until he abruptly got up to leave. I turned around just in time to see his face red and streaked with tears.

I haven't cried much since I've been in District 13. I broke down completely in the hovercraft, but since then, I haven't been able to cry. Maybe it's because I wore myself out emotionally in the days immediately following the rescue. Whatever the reason, I can't cry.

I've made up my mind anyway. There has been no development in the action to rescue Katniss. I know this because the game maker, Plutarch something has been keeping me informed. There aren't enough words in the English language to fully convey the hatred I feel for that man. I detest him almost as much as I do myself. He was in the hovercraft when they rescued me. He could have rescued Katniss, but instead chose me. For that I will never forgive him.

I've made up my mind. I'm going to end it all. For me, there will be no more Panem, no more suffering for Katniss, at least to my knowledge. The only thing that excites me now, that motivated me to get better, to walk once more was the thought of the sweet release of death. The all-consuming darkness seems so incredibly attractive to me. I want to immerse myself in the unfeeling bliss.

I've had to wait though. I have to do this properly. The medical staff of District 13 have a bad habit of saving my life, so I'll have to make it count on the first attempt. My thought was to pierce my brain with the arrow of a lethal looking bow that District 13 had created especially for Katniss. She'll never get to use it, so why can't I? The pain of her not being here is what's really killing me anyway, why not die at the hand of her weapon of choice?

I had to wait for the medical staff to believe that I'm stable enough to be left alone for more than ten minutes at a time. Today might be that day. A nurse pokes her head through the door roughly every half an hour, so I've decided to take my chances today. I feel the closest to happy that I have done in months. I'm almost excited. Not in a pleasant way, but sort of manically. Today's the day I get rid of the pain. The day that I finally get to feel the sweet release of death. The day I finally get to free myself from the hideous, agonising thoughts surrounding the mystery Katniss Everdeen's state. And I can't wait.

I glance over at the clock that sits on the cabinet in front of my bed. 13.27 pm. It's getting close. I thought it best to wait until my next nurse visit before I leave my bed, that way I get a full half an hour before they even realise that I'm gone. I imagine they'll try to find me, but it'll be too late by that point. I'll be no more than a body by that point, an empty vessel, thoughtless, mindless. It's going to be amazing.

Right on cue, a nurse comes in. I assume my usual position of staring straight in front of me, at nothing in particular. This particular nurse is quite young and timid looking; she doesn't try to talk to me, just checks the many machines I'm hooked up to and leaves. I start carefully unplug myself from the various attachments in my arms, and slowly rise from my bed, careful to make as little noise as possible. I'm in a private room, the only one in the hospital wing, which is very fortunate.

I worry about the extra noise that my prosthetic leg makes, but I've been working hard trying to minimize the sound over the last couple of days, practising how to walk with stealth. I've gotten a little better, enough at least so that no one should be able to hear me leave the hospital wing.

I mentioned that Plutarch whatshisname had been keeping me informed. It's about the only reason I could bear his frequent visits to my hospital bed. He was the one who told me about Katniss's new bow, and (and for this I'm actually grateful) the location of said bow. I don't know what use he thought it might be to me, but he told me exactly how to get to the weapons chamber from the hospital wing. I think his intention was that he might show it me once I got better. Something, I imagine, to do with this 'Mockingjay' nonsense that they want me to become once I leave the hospital wing. When he told me of the plans for this, I became quite furious. Not in a way that he could notice, the only outer signs of my anger were slight tensing of my body, and my tightly clenched fists. But I was livid inside. I knew that the original intention was for Katniss to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the revolution. But they hadn't rescued her, all they had was me, and what a better replacement than her partner in the star crossed lovers façade. I could play the heartbroken lover, mourning the loss of my one and only true love, vowing revenge on the Capitol for all the suffering it had caused not only me, but everyone in the districts.

How could they so easily replace Katniss that way? It was at that moment I realised I could trust no one, that I had left one arena, to become a piece in someone else's games. I think it was at that point that I fully knew what I had to do. I could not live in a world like this. I couldn't live without Katniss Everdeen.

So I knew where it was that I had to go to end my pain, but I also knew about the requirement of a key card, a pass of some sort. This came courtesy of one Mr Gale Hawthorne. He only visited me once, but that was enough for me to take the card. About halfway through his visit, when he started to cry I think, he put his head in his hands, as if he was trying to ignore the world, forget everything. I noticed a thin card sticking ever so slightly out of his back pocket. Engrossed in his own misery, I took the card in one quick movement. He didn't react, so I can only assume that he hadn't noticed. I immediately went back to my position of staring straight forward in total silence, having hidden the card under my sheets. I imagine he would have noticed the missing state of the card eventually, but due to the precarious position of the card in his back pocket, it would have been easy to assume it had simply fell out. If he had suspected it to be me, he hadn't come back to challenge me about it.

I made my way out of hospital wing, seeing no one. The latest group of rebel soldiers to come back from the Capitol had arrived that morning, so the medical staff all had their hands full with the injured from that, they were far too busy to be worrying about the unstable mute boy in the private room.

It's lunchtime for some of the District 13 residents, and the rest are busy with something else on their schedules so the corridors are empty. Plutarch had told me all about the way things worked around District 13. He had shown me his schedule tattooed on his arm, with an assurance that I would get used to it.

'I know it'll seem odd at first, so different from life in District 12, but the other refugees seemed to have assimilated rather well, so I'm sure once you'll do fine too.'

I doubted that very much. It took me about five minutes to make my way to the entrance of the weapons room. Standing outside, I looked around, took a deep breath and entered the card. I walk in; the door automatically closes behind me. I take a few steps forward, taken aback by the sheer quantity of weapons lining the walls and placed on large shelves that surround me. I don't know how I saw it, out of all the weapons that were placed around me, but there it was, just to the left of me, the bow. Katniss's bow. It was a magnificent looking creature, silver and much larger than anything I'd seen her use before, with an array of controls all over it. I picked it up, it being lighter than I thought it was going to be.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move. I turned around, and right there, just in front of the door stood Gale Hawthorne.


End file.
